Nashville didn't fully explore a route without dedicated bus lanes

Jan. 25, 2014

The BRT line in Eugene, Ore., uses a mix of bus rapid transit tools and not just bus-only lanes. / Chris Pietsch

Written by

Center bus-only lanes: This lane configuration allows buses to run in one or more exclusive lanes down the center of the street, allowing the bus to bypass congestion, with stations in the center of the street.

Public meeting

Mixed traffic: Much like regular service, buses run alongside other vehicles in curbside or inside lanes. But like other forms of BRT, buses stop at stations with mass-transit-style features such as level boarding platforms and pre-purchased tickets. Stations can be situated curbside or in the center.

Semi-exclusive lanes: Curbside lanes, often referred to as business access/transit lanes, are shared between buses and turning vehicles, with buses stopping at curbside stations.

More

ADVERTISEMENT

At the center of the controversy over Nashville’s proposed $174 million bus rapid transit line is the question of whether stretches of a busy road now used for cars should be converted into bus-only lanes.

Opponents of the 7.1-mile line proposed for the West End/Broadway corridor connecting West and East Nashville say taking away space for cars on already congested streets will make traffic worse, not better. Metro officials contend the dedicated lanes let buses avoid traffic and are keyto the Amp’s success.

But unlike other cities with such projects, Nashville never analyzed whether a bus line with the same mass-transit-style features — such as stations with level boarding platforms and pre-purchased tickets — would prove just as effective without the bus-only lanes.

That question lingers as engineers move forward in the coming months on a $7.5 million engineering phase that could largely settle the design of the proposal.

With project managers examining the Amp’s design drawings foot by foot, now is the time to figure out whether there’s a compromise that could satisfy opponents and still help achieve the city’s goal of relieving traffic on an important thoroughfare, said Ed Cole, executive director of the Transit Alliance of Middle Tennessee, which supports the project.

“The question is, will it really work, and are the benefits and travel time really worth the cost we’re going to have to pay?” Cole said. “I think it’s almost inevitable that we will look at these other concepts if the current design doesn’t work.”

4 systems studied

The project is vying for $75 million in federal transit funds, without which it won’t move forward. Part of the application involves showing federal officials that the design is the best among all of the alternatives.

Metro officials hired an engineering firm in 2011 to analyze four different transit systems for the east-west route. The firm compared an express bus to an Amp-style line with bus-only lanes. It also looked at two types of light rail or streetcar service — one version in mixed traffic and the other in dedicated lanes.

From that study, completed in early 2012, city officials chose bus rapid transit with bus-only lanes as the most efficient and cost-effective option.

Missing from that analysis, however, was a comparison of the type of bus rapid transit system that is far more common across the country. In cities such as Eugene, Ore., and Cleveland, Ohio, transit lines use a variety of lane configurations in addition to dedicated lanes, such as bus-only lanes at peak hours or curbside bus lanes that are shared with turning traffic.

In Eugene, just 2.6 miles, or 27 percent, of the 9.5-mile line use bus-only lanes. In Cleveland, about 4.1 miles of its 6.8-mile route use them.

Preliminary designs for the Amp call for dedicated lanes in the center of the road on roughly 82 percent of the route. If built, Nashville’s line would feature the country’s longest total length of former car lanes used now for buses only. Lines in Los Angeles and Hartford, Conn., used old rail lines for the lanes.

Project developers talked about other bus rapid transit styles but ruled them out along with such options as monorail and subway, said Jim McAteer, Nashville Metro Transit Authority’s planning director.

“It was definitely part of the conversation,” McAteer said. “We didn’t necessarily include every piece of that in the analysis that was put in the final report.”

Part of the reason for ruling out other bus line configurations was the feeling that those types couldn’t provide the speed of bus-only lanes, McAteer said.

“The end goal is to create a project that provides a high level of service, and the only way you can do that is if you’ve got speed,” McAteer said. “Any kind of bus that’s moving in a lane is not going to be competitive with an automobile if it’s stuck in traffic.”

The city also wanted a transit line that could transform the look and feel of the route, he said.

“Some of the goals of the project are to foster place-making and transit-oriented development, making the community more walkable,” McAteer said. “Not having a substantial amount of infrastructure will not get you to that end.”

Even so, engineers from Parsons Brinckerhoff, which conducted the study, analyzed the effectiveness of a slimmed-down version of bus rapid transit similar to the lines on Gallatin and Murfreesboro pikes, which the city calls “BRT lite.”

In the analysis, engineers accounted for the use of rapid transit features such as buses with technology to communicate with traffic lights and short special lanes called “queue jumps” that allow a bus to jump ahead of traffic at intersections.

The engineers found that both bus and light rail service in dedicated lanes would be faster than the mixed-traffic versions.

Vancouver chooses mixed-traffic line

Around the same time in 2011 when Nashville officials were weighing options for mass transit, officials in Vancouver, Wash., were moving forward on their own analysis of transit types with an eye toward winning federal funding.

After ruling out more costly systems such as commuter and light rail, they too were leaning toward a mass-transit-style bus system, said Chuck Green, a project manager for C-Tran, Vancouver’s transit authority.

Transit officials there considered nearly two dozen ideas using buses, focusing on different configurations such as center-running bus-only lanes and side lanes. Most of the designs included mass transit features designed to make the buses run faster, such as pre-purchased tickets and elaborate stations with level boarding to the buses.

In early public discussion, some businesses and residents reacted strongly against taking away car lanes for use by buses only, Green said.

Still, transit officials felt they needed to analyze the benefits of having the lanes compared to running a service in mixed traffic, he said.

The large number of options was winnowed to nine. The city hired the same engineering firm, Parsons Brinckerhoff, to conduct the full analysis.

A key component of that study was comparing travel times for each of the options in the year 2035. Engineers found that a rapid transit line in mixed traffic would shave 10 minutes off a 45-minute end-to-end trip on the city’s current bus system. The versions using a single or two center bus-only lanes were only a minute or two faster.

“We felt that we really didn’t need that one to two extra minutes in travel, and we’d rather have businesses on our side with the project,” Green said.

The mixed-traffic bus line had other advantages too. The estimated cost of the 6.5-mile line is $49.3 million — about $25 million less than with the lanes, Green said. Vancouver’s proposal is among several competing for the same pool of federal dollars as the Amp this year. Officials there are asking for $39.4 million in federal funding.

After conducting a similar analysis, officials in Eugene and El Paso, Texas, also opted to use a mixed-traffic configuration for significant portions of their lines.

When Eugene transit planners began looking at building a bus line, initial concepts called for center-running bus-only lanes, said Graham Carey, a civil engineer who helped design the system there.

“We wanted two dedicated lanes for the whole length of the corridor,” said Carey, who is currently an engineer on a bus rapid transit line under construction in Connecticut.

But much of the community feared that taking away those lanes from cars would cause congestion, Carey said.

“Everyone thinks Eugene is this liberal community and they’re accepting of everything transit,” Carey said. “We had an enormous amount of pushback from the community and politicians.”

Project planners revisited the designs mile by mile and considered other lane configurations. The end result in Eugene is a transit line that implemented bits and pieces of nearly every bus rapid transit tool in use, from bus-only lanes in some stretches to lanes buses share with turning traffic in other sections.

“It’s basically a Reader’s Digest version of different operating techniques,” Carey said. “We made compromises. Some of the compromises I can’t say I liked making. But they were necessary for getting the project off the ground.”

Carey reiterated that bus rapid transit systems work best when buses aren’t impeded by traffic. In his ideal world, all systems would have dedicated lanes.

But across the country, many communities have had a hard time stomaching the loss of traffic lanes. Plans for an extension to the Eugene line have sparked a lawsuit from a businessman over fears it will hurt access to his property. In Chicago, an opposition group has formed against a plan to put a bus rapid transit line there.

“It tends to be a political hot button and a no-go in many communities,” Carey said

Chance for changes?

Metro officials, including Mayor Karl Dean, saw firsthand the Eugene system during a visit there in 2012. Cole, the Nashville transit advocate who traveled along on the trip, was impressed with how smoothly the system worked.

Planners there and in Cleveland told Nashville officials to use the lessons they learned, Cole said.

“Their advice to us was to find the best mix,” Cole said. “Don’t get caught up on this gold standard thing, because at the end of the day there has to be flexibility.”

But by then, Amp project engineers were already firmly moving toward a rapid transit line with bus-only lanes.

“I think we got sort of convinced that we had to have gold standard wherever we could, and we lost sight — or maybe never had sight — of that flexible design work that Eugene said was so important,” Cole said.

Despite much design and engineering work left to be done on the Amp, rethinking lane configurations for large portions of the route would be a challenge for project engineers at this stage, Carey said.

“I think it is set probably more than they’d like to admit,” Carey said.

Changing the project significantly also would be politically daunting. The people behind opposition group StopAmp.org Inc. and the pro-Amp Coalition have dug in their heels as the proposal has grown increasingly divisive.

But some critics of the proposal said they would reconsider their opposition if the bus-only lanes were scaled back.

“Take that element away, and I think you have a whole other dialogue,” said Rick Bolsom, owner of West End Avenue restaurant Tin Angel. “I think it’s a much more workable idea.”

And at least one group of residents along the route has pushed for a compromise.

Richland-West End Neighborhood Association, whose residents live along the western stretch of the route, has proposed that bus-only lanes stop at Interstate 440, with buses running in mixed traffic between there and Saint Thomas West Hospital.

James Kelley, 65, a homeowner who serves on the association’s board, said part of the reason the Amp has been so polarizing is because of the lack of discussion between supporters and opponents.